Comprehensively Enhance the Quality of Civic Morality

The basic task of socialist moral construction is to improve citizens’ moral awareness, moral behavior, moral cultivation and moral sentiment. Comprehensively improving the moral quality of citizens is of great significance for promoting the development of social sciences, promoting the progress of social civilization, safeguarding the vital interests of the people, and creating a better life for the people. Party and state leaders have always attached importance to ideological and moral construction. Article 42 of the 1949 “Common Program of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference” stipulated the blueprint for ideological and moral construction, and clearly put forward “advocating loving the motherland, loving the people, loving labor, loving science, and loving public property” as the national morality. The 1954 Constitution of the People’s Republic of China requires citizens of the People’s Republic of China to “respect social morality”. The revised “Constitution of the People's Republic of China” in 1982 stipulates: “The state advocates loving the motherland, loving people, loving labor, loving science, loving socialism”, and replaces “loving public property” with “loving s socialism”. Since then, the “Resolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Several Important Issues Concerning Strengthening Socialist Ideological and Ethical Progress” passed by the 6th Plenary Session of the 12th CPC Central Committee in 1986 pointed out that, the fundamental task of promoting socialist ideological and ethical progress is to meet the needs of socialist modernization cultivate socialist citizens who are ideal, ethical, educated, and disciplined, and improve the ideological, moral and scientific and cultural qualities of the entire Chinese nation. In 1996, the 6th Plenary Session of the 14th CPC Central Committee adopted the “Resolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Several Important Issues Concerning Strengthening Socialist Ideological and Ethical Progress”, which stated that, socialist ideology and morality embodies the nature and direction of promoting socialist ideological and ethical progress. Its tasks are: to adhere to patriotism, collectivism, and socialist education, strengthen the construction of social morality, professional ethics, and family virtues, and guide people to establish a common ideal for building socialism with Chinese characteristics, as well as correct world outlook, outlook on life, and values. The “Implementation Program for Citizens’ Moral Construction” issued by the CPC Central Committee in 2001 pointed out that socialist moral construction must adhere to taking serving the people as the core, collectivism as the principle, and loving the motherland, loving the people, loving labor, loving science, and loving socialism as the basic requirements, social morality, professional ethics, family virtues as the acting points, and taking “patriotism and law-abiding, courtesy and integrity, unity and friendliness, diligence and thriftiness and self-renewal, and professional dedication” as the fundamental ethics of citizens. The report of the 16th CPC National Congress in 2002 pointed out that the ideological and ethical progress should be strengthened so that governing the country by law and virtue complement each other. The report of the 17th CPC National Congress in 2007 pointed out that we shall vigorously promote patriotism, collectivism, and socialist ideas, focus on enhancing integrity, strengthen social morality, professional ethics, family virtues, and individual morality, and guide people to consciously fulfill their legal obligations, social responsibility and family responsibility. The report of the 18th CPC National Congress in 2012, starting from the overall situation of solidly promoting the building of a country with a strong socialist culture, made arrangements to comprehensively improve the moral quality of citizens, emphasizing that this is the basic task of socialist moral construction.

We must adhere to the combination of governing the country by law and virtue, strengthen social morality, professional ethics, family virtues, and personal moral education, promote traditional Chinese virtues, and carry forward the new style of the times. We shall promote the program for improving civic morality, promote truth, goodness and beauty, denounce falseness, evil and ugliness, guide people to consciously fulfill legal obligations, social responsibilities, and family responsibilities, create a social atmosphere that laboring is glorious and creation is great, and form a good fashion of knowing honor and disgrace, upholding righteousness, making dedication, and promoting harmony. We shall carry out in-depth special education and governance for outstanding issues in the field of ethics, and strengthen the integrity of government affairs, business integrity, social integrity and judicial credibility. We shall strengthen and improve ideological and political work, pay attention to humanistic care and psychological counseling, and cultivate self-confident, rational and peaceful, and positive social mentality. We shall deepen intensive activities to promote cultural and ethical progress among the public, extensively carry out voluntary services, promote activities of learning from Lei Feng, and normalize learning and publicity of moral models.